Weighing Obesity, Continued

I have read them, as well at the last one, which is actually dated Monday, in which she rebuts the complaints of some of the people who posted comments on her articles. People DO hate to let go of prejudices, don't they? And as she says, so many have such a strong profit motive for holding on to old beliefs. This is a WONDERFUL series, & I thank you for sharing it with us. It is something we need to read, & something I would never have found on my own.

It's a shame such thoughtful and well-written articles rarely see daylight in mainstream media. But of course most mainstream (i.e. commercial) media has to cater to advertisers, and the weight loss/fitness industry accounts for a lot of advertising revenue. Which is why I've given up any hope that Oprah will ever give up on her dieting/fat bashing crap and embrace size acceptance. There's too much Jenny Craig/Slimfast etc. ad dollars at stake.

Excellent series indeed. And lots of food for thought. Food does not make you fat. It does not! My grandpa could not imagine a day without potatoes fried in lard and used to round each meal off with a cup of double cream. He was a tall and slender man all his life long, a long life, NB. My mom was fat all her mature years of life. Since the doctors discovered she had a heart condition she followed a strict no-fat diet to lower her cholesterol levels and lose weight that was oh so bad for her heart. I would not be surprised if she had anorexia nervosa by her last years. She died very young. Way to young if you ask an 11-year-old. Attitude towards ourselves and our bodies may be what makes us fat. I am too young to have experienced early 70’s with Twiggy as an example of a perfect body. And I consider myself lucky – it was not healthy at the least and plain scary if you are just honest about it. It seems to have become a little better lately (if you don’t take into account CK’s models). If you ask my grandpa (or someone his age anyway) it is expected, read normal, of a person to gain some weight with age. Of course we have progressed since, but in a way it seems we lost our sober look on health and norm and beauty for that matter. We’re just looking for extremes and the weirder, the better. This may sound like a crazy idea but I’m just going to go ahead and write it down. (Brian, no offence, this is hypothetical again =) Human race is also evolving, maybe becoming fatter (apart of the dieting-victims) is pure strategy: maybe we need the extra accumulated energy to fight off all those new viruses and illnesses (think SARS, AIDS and who knows what else is waiting for us). And then fat is very much justifiable. So why jump to the conclusions and declare a war on fat! It could be our salvation. Another fact: here in Northern Europe there is a very clear tendency of people getting taller with every generation. Maybe they ought also just to go ahead and declare a war on that too. After all, dinosaurs died out possibly because they got too big and tall. So let’s just deny calcium to all those expecting moms and limit their caloric intake too. Makes as much sense as a war on fat. My conclusion remains that our problem is not fat but our attitudes and greediness when it comes to control.

Olena, I've had similar evolutionary thoughts, as well, though I always take such imaginings of specific intent of the Universe with a large grain of salt. Still, I've wondered...maybe something is coming that Mother Nature knows about--a worldwide famine, climatic changes, the Giant Asteroid, the limits of carrying capacity for this species, whatever--and she's trying to insure the survival of the species. Since many of us here couldn't lose any body fat on a thousand calories per day, we're sure set up well to survive lean times. Body fat certainly was our salvation in the evolutionary past. (though, with what humans have made of the world, that seems at best a mixed blessing!) Surely it will be again.

I hadn't read the to-do list article until this morning--and hey! She says what I've said here a dozen times about eating--though, of course, much better than I ever said it. (She's a terrific writer.) And a mile and a quarter of walking per day will get you the lion's share of the health benefit? Wow, that's next to nothing! If I get super-busy and have to scale back on exercise some day, it's nice to know that such a small amount--just a 20 minute walk during lunch hour--will still be quite healthful.

What a wonderful series of articles. I don't remember when something I read online had actually made me feel better about myself, fed my mind and lifted my spirits.

I'm happily we're finally seeing this kind of article in non-mainstream press. It has to start somewhere, after all. Where do you think mainstream press gets their ideas, anyway.

I just wish that it could receive wider circulation. These articles should be read by every fat person in this country, & everyone in the health care field. It would really have the weight loss industry tearing out their hair.

The weight loss industry is probably already tearing out their hair. Anything which remotely challenges their dominance and obviousness sends them into an extreme defensive mode. That's why they routinely overstate the "threat" of size acceptance. Even if we aren't that large of a movement, we do directly threaten their revenue stream. They cannot afford to let us become a realistic threat so they see to it that we are presented as an evil on par with the cigarette industry. Literally. I'm sure someone is already sweating this, because whenever it does get into the mainstream press, they've probably already lost.

We can only hope so, Brian. And I have seen some of what they do in response to size acceptance, trying to make us look like the lunatic fringe, a crackpot element, a bunch of lazy, gluttonous fat slobs who are in denial & just don't want to DO anything about ourselves so that we can be "good, healthy thin people." Of course, we know that they don't want anyone to really succeed in permanent weight loss anyway, because their existence is dependent on repeat business, but they also certainly don't want people loving & accepting themselves as they are.

It is a great series. I've been posting each part on USENET on the fat acceptance newsgroups and then sitting back to see how the trolls react. Hehehehe, most of the series they ignored and the ones they did comment on they just attacked the author and then ran around spouting their usual fat-hatred drivel (plus they crossposted their replies to other newsgroup where MORE people could get the link back to the original articles on Tech Central hehehehehe)

this was a great article I wish that usa today and cnn would show this article without editing it to fit the bias on diet and weight control. be nice too if scientific journals would take it up too.